Bob Dyer: Let the sun shine

Sunday

The day on which we spring ahead is one of my favorites of the entire year.

But now a bunch of knuckleheads are messing with it.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Texas is one of half a dozen states where movements are afoot to kill DST.

In Texas, a state representative is leading the charge and claiming he is being widely praised for it.

“There’s 24 hours in a day and that’s how many we should have,” Rep. Jason Isaac told the newspaper.

“This is a man-made creation. Why we adjust twice a year, I don’t understand.”

How someone can’t understand the beauty of daylight saving time is beyond me.

DST rocks. You can enjoy the sun longer and also pump up your level of Vitamin D, a requirement for healthy bones. You can see things longer. Heck, by June, you can play golf until 9:30 at night.

When we switch to DST in the spring, nobody suffers from the opposite of Seasonal Affective Disorder. There isn’t one.

People were meant to live in the daylight. The only creatures that hate the sun are moles and bats and other creepy things.

(Obligatory disclaimer here: Don’t get skin cancer.)

Society as a whole benefits, too, because daylight saving time saves energy that otherwise would be used to power artificial lighting.

Yet somehow, according to the Star-Telegram, groups also are challenging the wonderful tradition in California, Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, Washington and Wisconsin.

DST is not exactly a bizarre concept. It is used in about 75 countries.

The website TimeAndDate.com — an amazing resource that can tell you almost anything about, yep, times and dates — says DST was first used in Canada in 1908.

It was used across an entire country for the first time in 1916, when Germany wanted to save fuel to funnel to its military during World War I.

The U.S. followed suit two years later to supplement its own war effort, calling it “Fast Time.”

During World War II, under the name “War Time,” it was in effect year-around for 3˝ years.

From the end of World War II until 1966, our start-and-stop dates weren’t uniform. That caused plenty of confusion with things like airline schedules, so Congress set the standard, turning it on from the end of April to the end of October.

Following the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973, DST was bumped out to a whopping 10 months. However, so many folks complained about kids having to go to school in the dark during the short winter days that soon the span was pulled back to eight months.

But get this: During that energy-crisis period, DST is said to have saved the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil per day.

We’ve moved the dates around a couple of times since then, most recently in 2007, when we extended it to about eight months.